Whither she went she neither cared nor knew. She had a vague remembrance of having passed through the flower-market, and being set upon to buy, by a soft-voiced, smiling woman who stood behind great blurs of red and yellow and white and purple, shrined in verdure, from which luscious scent arose. To get rid of her, she had paid a persistent child a franc for a big bunch of violets, and the girl, with a saucy, merry face, thrust into her hand also a spray of orange blossom. Helen threw this last away impatiently. Impossible to be rid of the suggestions of that wedding, ten-fold more abhorrent to her now that she had seen for herself and knew beyond a peradventure that it was inspired by no such love as she and John had felt for each other only a day or two before; such love as she must feel for him, God help her, till she died.
She walked on through the town, far into the outskirts, till seeing a sign of "New Milk" upon a chalet near the road made her suddenly remember she had set out without even her morning coffee. Going inside the building, she sat for a few moments at a table while a woman served her with rolls and a glass of milk, and then, starting forth again, was vaguely tempted to ascend a hillside which rose abruptly above the spot, crowned with a noble growth of trees.
Helen had no sooner gained the smooth plateau of the summit than she remembered where she was. Long ago, as a child, in charge of her English governess, journeying from the Italian seashore to join her father at Marseilles, they had stopped over for a midsummer fête at Mont St. Cassien, where, in blazing heat, the Cannois and their rustic neighbors from miles around had fulfilled an old custom of Provence in holding service at a little chapel on this hill, the remainder of the day and evening being spent in feasting at tables spread on the slopes and in the green valley below. She could shut her eyes and see again the lights gleaming around the tables, as the hot darkness fell, the gay costumes, and the chain of dancers threading its way among the trees.
The grass was growing wild and coarse where she followed a shaded path to the little hut in which a holy hermit had once lived and died. A peasant woman in the kitchen of the hermitage was cooking something in a casserole over a tiny fire, but she left it civilly to conduct the stranger through to the chapel adjoining. A girl grown to woman's height, but, alas, a child in intellect, began pulling and tugging at her mother's gown, asking witless questions and being repeatedly, but tenderly, thrust aside by the woman, and told to stay in her own place.
Helen hardly knew why she had acceded to the woman's suggestion that she should visit the uninteresting sanctuary, with its cheap emblems and smell of stale incense, and decorations of paper flowers.
But she understood, when through the now opened front door a gentleman stepped from broad sunshine into the chill interior, apparently as aimless as herself, and came up to her side.
"Helen! You are alone?"
"You here!" she answered under her breath. "When I have come all this distance to be away from you!"
"It is the same with me, Helen," Glynn said in a sombre voice. "I have wandered and wandered up here for no reason in particular, trying to believe you are not in Cannes, trying to master my ungovernable desire to be with you only once again."
"It is all of a piece with our being thrust together that day upon the train," she cried impetuously. "What have we done that such things should be forced upon us?"